Long John Poem by Onuora ilodibe

When I was a teenage boy
I love to travel to the village
To visit granddad on holiday
And acquaint with custom
My pair group and language
I love the birds song faraway
I love the smell of air and foliage
Rustling leaves speaks at night
Akin to the voice of the beasts
Lurking in the dark of folktales
Distinct from the voice of the city
Here the boys Pride of bravery
Unlike the city boys Pride in academics
Both I envied, the finesse and the courage
Life is never void of knowledge when granddad thrust an adage
Shaper than the Bantu's assegai

On a long ride on the back of his long John
I strive for balance between the two worlds
As we peddle down his memory lane
Furnishes me with heroics and history of our land
It never seize to amaze me much he knows
About planting and seasons trade winds and weather
Pests disease control and crop preservation
Pathogenesis pantheism and shamanism
Men with vestigial tail a story I'll never forget
Who comes to trade in the marketplace
No one knows from whence they come and part
streams cold in the morning Warm at night
With water and fire the saviour will baptize
Effigies stolen in the middle of the night

They say a little leaven, leavens the bread
When we cycle home in the dusk I plunge
My drums deafen and heart awe-stifles
Discombobulating thoughts riddling in my head
Times as that I hit the sheets on empty stomach
Prepared to siege the Icelandic dreamworld Siegfried
Oral traditions has no records but we learned
Corpus Christi hitherto memorial divine
The Prolepsis of our ethereal sojourn
Leitmotif dichotomy preoccupied my subconscious

Narrow is the track my long John could pass
Troubles my heart little known about my past
History never thought in the school class
Gleaned in open fireplace wisdom of sages
Folklores and songs that ushers the new moon
On a full moon we dance in circles
Playground memories are like yesterday
The pair group wrestle the girls and fables
Ephemeral, deciduous leaves in the winters of heart
Long gone with the summer
threaded in supper
Makes my smile sometimes desolate
If I could wind back the hand of time
I would rather have taken a longer ride
With granddad on the back his long John

Onuora Ilodibe